A portrait in the office of Margaret Leinen shows her not as the newly appointed director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography but as a young researcher, sitting in a dredge bucket surrounded by piles of dark and porous rocks. It’s a reminder of one of Leinen’s first discoveries: a deep-sea vent off the Juan De Fuca Ridge near Washington, where Leinen descended in a submersible to find an underwater wonderland brimming with strange life.

“We thought there must be hydrothermal activity on that ridge,” she said. “But we had no direct evidence of it until one day I was out on a cruise and dredged up rock with animals attached. ... There were huge spires that stuck up 20 feet, and they were just festooned with organisms.”

The finding was a watershed for Leinen’s career in paleoceanography because it happened at the intersection of geology, biology and oceanography — a middle ground of disciplines where Leinen has spent much of her career, and where she hopes to lead Scripps’ research.

Leinen, 67, joined Scripps in October, replacing former director Tony Haymet. Although professor Catherine Constable served as interim director of Scripps after Haymet’s departure, Leinen is the first woman to serve in a permanent position as vice chancellor for marine sciences, director of Scripps and dean of the School of Marine Sciences at the University of California San Diego.

Leinen previously ran the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University, oversaw a $700 million grant program at the National Science Foundation and served as dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.

Born in Chicago, she was drawn to the emerging field of biochemistry as a high school student. In college, she switched majors six times before a field trip to a strip mine got her hooked on geology.

“It was November, it was raining, it was cold, it was muddy, it was miserable,” she said. “The faculty was out there, too. They were out offering coffee and talking about what was going on. It was such a different experience for me, compared to 450 people in a lecture hall.”

She earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Illinois, a master’s degree in geological oceanography from Oregon State University and a doctorate in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island before entering academia as a professor and then administrator.

Jim Yoder, vice president for academic programs at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachussetts and one of Leinen’s former employees, said she stressed interdisciplinary cooperation in the early 1990s before it was common in academia.

Leinen was also interested in the human dimension of oceanographic events, asking how issues such as fishery changes or stormwater pollution affect people in the water, Yoder said.

And she recognized the importance of scientific communication. For example, he said, she wrote and recited a haiku in Japanese as part of a meeting with colleagues in Japan.

“She’s very good at speaking to groups, very quick on her feet,” Yoder said.

Margaret Leinen, Ph.D.(left) who is the director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, talks with Patrick Helbling director of operations and administration at Birch Aquarium on Wednesday in San Diego, California.
— Eduardo Contreras

Margaret Leinen, Ph.D.(left) who is the director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, talks with Patrick Helbling director of operations and administration at Birch Aquarium on Wednesday in San Diego, California.
— Eduardo Contreras

At Scripps, Leinen plans to hire more professors, build on the institution’s extensive oceanic remote-monitoring system and explore new funding sources for marine research. She recently talked with U-T San Diego about her background and her vision for the 110-year-old Scripps, and here is an edited version of that conversation.

Q: What does your own field of paleoceanography reveal about the ocean environment?

A: Sediments from the bottom of the ocean are sort of like a tape recorder of everything that happened. The shells of micro-organisms tell stories of the surface environment. The chemistry in their shells gives you information about the temperature of the water. Their distribution tells you about currents in the past. All that gives you a picture of how the oceans were, and how they influenced climate.

Q: The National Science Foundation is Scripps’ biggest sponsor, providing more than a third of its grants. How will your experience as an administrator there benefit you as a grant applicant at Scripps?

A: The foundation is in many ways like being in a university. The program officers are all Ph.D. (holders). They use all the knowledge of their fields to ensure that there’s a balanced portfolio of discovery and that the best science moves forward. They’re also very interested in breakthroughs, in areas that we think are very important that have not had a lot of investment. Now we hear about investment in Arctic science. The Arctic could be ice-free in summer by mid-century, and it hasn’t been ice-free in millions of years. The foundation is also very interested in promoting collaboration between and among different kinds of science.

Q: What is unique about Scripps’ role in ocean science?

A: One thing that’s really special about Scripps is the breadth of experience. It is so broad that it has the capability to study any ocean or climate problem in the world, whether it’s the deep biosphere, the Arctic or genomic tools for studying organisms in the water. The development of new instruments, sensors and platforms are all areas where Scripps has great expertise and can just leap right in.

Q: What are your immediate plans for Scripps?

A: We’re looking at how to shape thinking about our strategic plan in ways that works with the UC San Diego strategic plan. What role will (the university) have in understanding the environment, and how do we fit? Second ... we’re putting in a proposal for 10 additional faculty in the next three years.

Q: What are the major investments you anticipate for Scripps?

A: We’ve invested tremendous resources in development of new techniques for observing the ocean. A big piece for the next decade is the ability to have persistent observation of the ocean. That means we’re there when extreme events happen, when the typhoon comes through or there’s an intense El Niño, or an unusual biological event.

Q: How do you pay for new monitoring systems when the existing ones aren’t fully funded?

A: The array of moorings in the equatorial Pacific that allows oceanographers to make El Niño forecasts is underfunded. One of the things that makes it expensive is it’s a mooring, which we have to travel to the Pacific to maintain. Are there other ways to get data, and who needs the information most? Would they be willing to pay for it? The agriculture industry funds specific weather forecasting. Are there people who need El Niño forecasting, such as energy officials?

Q: What are the major challenges facing oceanography?

A: The biggest challenge is still getting the observations, whether it’s the technology of getting the information you want or the resources to get enough of it. The second major challenge is how to study and observe the oceans now to prepare for changes that are coming. How do we establish a baseline? Another big challenge is getting young people interested in the ocean. Kids will dive into things they’re interested in. ... So how do we get them interested and say, “This is fun. You’ll enjoy it. There are jobs here.”

Q: As director of Scripps, how do you tell the public about your mission?

A: For many years, the community of Scripps was other scientists. So the other scientists knew us, but the field was so young that we didn’t draw the connection between what we do and how it affects people every day. For instance, the morning surf report every day is based on buoys that Scripps puts out and maintains.

Q: You have said we need to develop a sense of environmental stewardship. Why is that important to business and the economy?

A: We assume that (the environment) is going to be fine, so we can move forward. A lot of our work in oceanography and other fields of environmental science show how fragile these assumptions are. For instance, sea level rise can affect our Navy port. If we don’t do anything, we could find ourselves with a port that’s unusable or a port that’s wiped out. Drought is another example. If we knew for sure that in 20 years our water supply would be 20 percent less, that might guide what we’re willing to spend money on.

Q: What has been your experience as a woman working in a predominantly male field?

A: I was very fortunate. I didn’t encounter a lot of obstacles. For me, the major obstacle was the lack of (female) role models. We have terrible images of scientists as dull people who don’t like music and work in a lab and ignore their families. But beyond the stereotype, we have all kinds of people in science, including students with pink hair and tattoos.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

•History: Founded in 1903 by UC Berkeley zoologist William E. Ritter and some prominent San Diegans, including E.W. Scripps and Ellen Browning Scripps.